Hmm… 3D or 2D?

Note: I compiled two posts two weeks ago since I knew I would probably be busy Thanksgiving week (last week).

As I’m building this project, I’ve had to decided between building a 3D model of something (like an elephant) or just erecting a 2D picture of an elephant instead. It’s a pretty big design decision for me and sometimes a hard one to make. At first, it seemed like going 3D would always be the way to go because it seems to “look better,” but after my experience so far, “looking better” is completely dependent on the use and context of the object. The 3D vs. 2D decision has instead turned into a question of “which is more appropriate?”

My Thoughts on 3D Objects

For most cases, if you can readily find a 3D object (e.g., if you’re looking for a 3D elephant), it’s generally the

2D African vs. 3D Mosquito. This may get ugly.

best bet if your item is going to be a prop in a set. But clue in on the last part of that sentence. 3D objects are best suited for when you are building something that’s supposed to be some tangible, “believable” virtual reality. Another way of saying that is that 3D objects are most applicable for when the object directly represents something that exists in the real world and when that is your intent of implementing the object.

For instance, since I was trying to give the user a quick taste of Africa, I strived to get all 3D animals and plant life because the intent of the room was to visually get the atmosphere of Africa across.

Finding 3D objects means that the object has already been created by another Second Life user and it’s for sale. Of course, not every object in the world has been created by a Second Life user (though many have), so if a 3D object isn’t available and you want want, you have to go ahead and build one. If you’re like me, you aren’t a master Second Life craftsman and you don’t really know how to make an elephant out of anything other than a bunch of grey spheres.

…Now for 2D Objects

2D objects serve two purposes for me and my application of Second Life construction. First, they are a simpler and quicker alternative when you can’t find a premade 3D object, or if the 3D objects on the market don’t suit your implementation needs. For example, I didn’t want to drain my Second Life bank account in one room, and I was also trying to save space, so one decision I made was to make a couple two-dimensional Zebras and placed them as a sort of “middleman” betweent he foreground and background since the wall had small zebras in the distance.

The more intuitive reason for going 2D is when the object isn’t necessarily representing a physical real-world object. Another way of saying this is that the object’s symbolism may exceed that of just a physical object.

2D: An obvious choice for signs and images.

2D objects especially come into play when you aren’t recreating something in SL, but trying to get a message across. 2D objects are obviously less complex than 3D objects, and I think that the depth of a 3D set can detract from the message you are trying to get across. For this reason, in the bottom room of our exhibit, I was targeting specific phrases about NothingButNets. I used 2D signs for the text messages as I did in the top room, but I also used 2D “cutouts” of Africans BECAUSE they were simpler. 2D objects seem to be quicker to comprehend since depth isn’t an issue so it occurred to me that keeping the objects as simple as possible in the bottom room would accentuate the message I was trying to portray.

Often I had to put myself back in the “passenger’s seat”, go into first person view on my avatar, and walk back into the room to get a grasp of dimensions, placement, and also how well the message would flow.

Implementing 2D objects is no shortcut, necessarily, as there are pros and cons and usages for both 3D and 2D objects.

The Challenge of Building in Mid-Air

Joe generously let us build in mid-air — suspended above the rest of the Educators Coop and the other groups — so that we could have more room to build for our ride. I quickly found out that (a) we DID need a lot of room and (b) building in mid-air is perplexing.

Room-Based Illusions

The primary challenge of building in the sky is that you have to create the ILLUSION that you AREN’T in the sky. In our case, we were going to recreate African environments, so it was particularly essential that we make the user feel not only that he or she was on the ground, but in a certain environment that we had to portray.

One Serengeti spanning multiple walls.

I decided to make rooms. Of course, rooms have walls, but you can create the illusion of depth by texturing the walls in a way that simulate depth — in our case, pictures of the Serengeti. Of course, it would look silly to use different pictures across each segment of the wall. There would be harsh clashes between where each image begins and ends. So I decided to smear a panoramic shot across multiple walls. This way, one continuous image could transition across the whole room without the ugly breaks where imagines repeat or change. I found that once the image ended, it could be repeated on the next set of wall segments, but just horizontally flipped so that it was mirrored across the image-change.

I do wish that it was easier to set a single texture to multiple wall segments. Instead of some intuitive controls, I had to manually mess with the texture properties for each wall segment, offsetting the texture for each individual wall. It took some time, but I’m happy with the end effect.

Hello, Beautiful Sky

Second Life's virtual sky blends in well enough to the walls of my room.

In prototype 1.0 (my very first attempt), I actually roofed off the room that was supposed to be a part of Africa with animals and a panoramic Serengeti. It didn’t take long to laugh at myself for blocking out Second Life’s virtual sky with some ugly blocks that I had temporarily colored blue until I could set a sky texture.

However, I’m currently making the second big room to our ride and it will not fit side-by-side with the first room on our plot of land without invading another group’s airspace. Since I was already politely and patiently asked to move out of Games for Change’s airspace, I knew it was out of the question. Note: I didn’t know I couldn’t build above other groups when I started. When I found out we had to move, I moved everything as soon as I could.

So now the only other option, aside from sacrificing the floorspace of this next room, is to place the room either above the first room or below. I decided to place the second room below since the first room will focus on trying to look more like Africa, and the second room will be used to get more information out. I really am trying to make a convincing sky, though. I found a larger picture of clouds on Google and after some annoying math work, I got the sky to stretch across a 20×20 meter ceiling. On its own, it looks OK but I’m eager to see what it will look like boxed in to the top of a room.

I still have a ways to go, but we’ll see.

“Hack”: Running Second Life Without Administration Priviledges (On a Limited Windows Account)

I do most of my work at the McCombs Business School’s “Millenium Lab” because:

1. LOTS of desk space.
2. “Fast enough” computers.
3. Virtually empty late at night.
4. Quiet late at night (see #3).

To mash it all together, the Millenium Lab at night really resounds with my nocturnal study habits because I can fan out all my class material, notes, and textbooks and just get everything done without nagging roommates, it’s quiet enough to where I can focus on my work with no distractions of nuisances, and the computers just work. Also, the keyboards are minimalistic and awesome. My laptop keys don’t clack as loud as the Millenium Lab’s *deep voice* DELL keyboards. I don’t know — something about the clacking of keyboard keys just screams “productivity.”

ANYHOW, so the other week I was at the computer lab getting some government work done (work in my all-consuming government class? You don’t say!) and I’m “done enough” with government work and I go, “hey, why don’t I just get some Second Life building done while I’m in this crazy productivity streak.”

Translation: "Bug off, lowly Limited account!" Rude.

I download the installation file (have to download it to the My Documents folder because administration priviledges don’t let you download to wherever you want. And then I go to install it, but nooooo. I get an error message saying that I don’t have the appropriate rights to install Second Life.

I wasn’t going to give up that easily, though. I live in West Campus and the imminent walk home? — Wasn’t feeling it. By golly I was going to install Second Life whether I had the “account priviledge” or not.

I knew that what I was doing wasn’t illegal. I mean, Second Life was easily installable on, say, FAC computers. Business school computers are just fussy. And I’m sort of a tinker, and I wasn’t going to back down from computer #63 without some tinkering. I felt like it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t install Second Life to do legitimate school work and set out to make it happen.

The Solution

Do this and you're set.

Right-click the installation file and click Properties. Go into the Compatibility tab and check the “Run this program in compatibility mode.” Select “Windows 95.” Press OK because you’re done.

Now install.

I don’t know what monkey business now goes on behind the scenes, but I imagine it’s the monkey business of the good kind because it works — and that’s what we want, right? Second Life installs and launches without a hitch (well, not quite).

Once you’re in Second Life, immediately press Ctrl-P [or] go to the Edit button at the top of the screen and click Preferences. In the Voice Chat tab, disable Voice Chat. Second Life really chugged along like a slide show until I turned off Voice Chat as it apparently takes up a lot of resources. I also suggest going into the Graphical options and running at lower settings. I personally like windowed mode so I can multi-task (like write some sick posts or Google some sweet texture images).

There You Have it

Second Life is running on your favorite restricted-access computer and you’re rig building.

So why did I post this? Well, for one, I tried Googling a fix and found nothing. I’d like this post to get indexed by Google and appear for other people in the same pickle. That’s actually why my post title is so long — I tried to hit on as many keywords as I could for this problem (at least the search terms I queried when I was looking for the solution).

Two, I’m sure Joe will teach this class in the future. Perhaps he can find some utility from this and pass it on to future students should they run into the same dilemma.

I’ve Started Recording

In the computer lab yesterday for class, Joe showed us how to use a movie editing program on the Mac. He then introduced us to a small recording room with professional recording equipment like a microphone. Apparently you can sign in for time slots to use the room.

However, I’m taking a more do-it-yourself approach and downloaded a program called FRAPS, which is

One of the FRAPS Control Panel Screens

computer video recording software specifically for games. I’ve been experimenting with FRAPS in Second Life and its menu is very intuitive and easy to use. Everything is controlled by hotkeys that you can set yourself, primarily start/stop recording. There’s also a feature you can toggle that displays how many frames are being rendered on screen per second so that you can make sure that if you’re recording at 30 frames per second (FPS), you can make sure the game is running at least 30 FPS.

I was first using the demo version of FRAPS which put a watermark on the top of all recorded videos. I considered cropping it out, but I spoke to a friend of mine that paid for the full version. He didn’t use it much so I gave it to me.

I’m not sure what video editing program I will use yet. Looking for a Windows-compatible solution first interested me, but after playing with the intuitive movie editing software on the Macs in the computer lab, I may just bring all my files to the lab and edit it there unless I find a nice Windows alternative.

One regret I have right now is that I haven’t been recording any video so far from my early days in Second Life (early semester). I was taking a good amount of screen captures at first, but for some reason I haven’t been taking many screen shots at all recently. I know the machinima doesn’t need to be completely video, but ideally I would have liked it to be. Also I’m missing some chunks of my Second Life experience so far during periods where I wasn’t too screenshot-happy.

Oh well, I did lay out all the media I’ve taken so far to date and it’s pretty substantial. There is no doubt that I have enough screenshots as it is to make a personal machinima of my SL experience, so the next step is to arrange these screenshots in a logical flow to address the objective of making a movie to describe my time in Second Life.

Building Can Be Frustrating.

I seem to have the hardest time building in Second Life. — Not because the process of creating prims and editing them is difficult — In fact, it’s extremely easy — but my big problem comes when it’s time to line these prims up.

Large Scale Building in SL has Always Amazed Me

In Second Life, a sort of flickering phenomenon occurs when two different prims “fight” over visibility when they are overlapping. It’s as though the surfaces are sharing visibility equally by cycling between eachother, and this creates a very distracting, annoying, and possibly even epileptic effect.

At first, construction appeared easy enough, as it’s very intuitive. Everything is click and drag, and everything works in the manner in which you would expect. One of my favorite features is the hold-shift-and-drag, which duplicates the prim and then shifts the duplication wherever you want. This makes it easy to make a floor, as you can quickly replicate prims across the ground, and then take the new floor and replicate it again in an exponential manner until you cover the floor-space suitable for your objective.

But quickly I realized that dragging prims around was inaccurate as prims would overlap, or not quite reach eachother. The first floor I ever made was a mess. There were cracks where prims didn’t quite meet, and the flickering phenomenon reared its ugly face where sections of the floor overlapped one another.

I asked a classmate how to deal with this situation, and she explained that I would need to line up prims mathematically by manually entering in X, Y, and Z dimensions so that there was no overlap and prims would spatially and mathematically be perfectly aligned. While this may be easy when you’re just working on one

Another Incredible Construction Feat in Second Life

plane, like the X axis, but gets difficult when dealing with all the axes and with prims of varying shapes, sizes, and dimensions. While the math isn’t too complicated, it gets messy because you’re editing alignment on the decimal scale, going down to the thousandth place.

It’s frustrating, and at first it really hindered my productivity as I would focus on lining up prims before building the next part, but I’ve found that it’s much more productive to go ahead and get a structure fleshed out, and THEN go back and line anything up.

For our project, I’ll teach my team members how to line up prims if they already don’t know, and someone can hopefully work behind me as I build or the other way around.

Is Second Life Dying or Not?

I can’t seem to find the answer to this question. Everyone seems to have their own answer to this question, retired-SLers seeming to say that it is dying while still-active SL veterans disagree, explaining that it’s better than ever.

Interestingly enough, I found out that the former CEO of Linden Labs, Philip Rosedale, stepped down from his CEO position at Linden Labs in March of 2008. While this at first seems like more evidence of Linden Lab’s demise and it generated a lot of press saying “the end” to Second Life, I read the details and the reason behind his step-down is inconclusive at worst and not evidence of the end at best.

Rosedale's Second Life Avatar

First of all, Rosedale did not leave Linden Labs, he replaced Mitch Kapor as the chairman of the Linden Labs board and still works full-time at Linden Labs.

The article explains that the shift from CEO to another position in the company is a common trend in tech start-ups as the visionary founder moves away from the operations-focused nature of being a CEO. I can imagine that, as one’s impassioned hobby turns into a job and that flare of innovation gets treaded on by day-to-day activities of high-end business functions.

Second Life has been experiencing slow registration rates ever since the initial momentous craze and activity frenzy that Second Life enjoyed early on, but isn’t this the reality of anything after the novelty wears off and the press coverage calms down? Some people seem to cite the fact that Second Life registration rates have dropped, but that doesn’t mean that SL is dying. User retention rates are low though, and a small percentage of users even make it off the orientation island, but this is a problem with Linden Lab’s construction of the orientation island, not the result of a dying virtual world.

However, other sources point out some interesting points and figures. Apparently, one of the most popular pull factors and activities of Second Life was gambling, with many casino sims being some of the most highest trafficked places in the virtual world. Then came the gambling ban in July 2007 in which all gambling activity ceased to exist as well as the large portion of the userbase that gambled.  Then came the Value Added Tax (VAT) for EU users in which people in VAT-enabled nations (EU) were effectively taxed on their Second Life goods. These two events lead to a substantial drop in Second Life activity and people must be increasingly innovative to keep Second Life alive.

What Rights do you have in Second Life?!

Stevan Lieberman, Second Life Lawyer

A while back I read about a lawyer that was making a presence in Second Life and sort of randomly recalled it the other day. Revisiting that interest and the notion of “virtual lawyers,” which I found both amusing and startling, I decided to do some research and Googled the topic.

Land Theft

My first finding was an article published in Second Life Insider. It then led to an article about virtual land theft. Apparently, an avatar named Lucrezia Ah was putting 44,832 square meters of virtual land on the market. Before she even set all the parameters and clicked the final “OK” of the dialog box, Landbaron Merlin’s “landbot” swooped in and bought her land up for the low, rip-off of L$0.5 per square meter by effectively utilizing a user interface bug to completely sheer the land away from Lucrezia.

Merlin’s blatant theft cost Lucrezia $2,000 US dollars.

When I read that dollar amount, I was pretty shocked. It’s hard for me to grasp “worth” and “value” within Second Life, but this really puts things into perspective and reminds you that you’re dealing with real money here. Even the idea of a LInden Dollar stock exchange was always amusing to me, but a $2,000 USD virtual theft will wake you up.

What is surprising is that although $2,000 USD was stolen from Lucrezia, no legal charges were pressed. This leads me to wonder if even though real US dollars were stolen, since they were stolen in a virtual world, do they have no legal consequences in “real life?” Second Life users got together and rose L$100,000 in an effort to compensate Lucrezia. Is there no way for Lucrezia to reclaim her money through Linden Labs? It baffles me that she didn’t or couldn’t  take the issue to Linden Labs. After all, the theft was executed

Interesting Content Theft Ads Involving SL

through a glitch in the UI and was no mistake of Lucrezia.

I’d like to further pursue this topic of what rights we have as “citizens” of virtual worlds, although I couldn’t find any more specific resolution of Lucrezia’s case.

Virtual Class vs. Online, Remote Class

I made a post a while back about virtual class vs. class in a classroom and after more experience in Second Life, I’d like to compare virtual class to a class taken remotely online.

In INF 312, a class I took last Spring from the School of Information, the entire class was conducted online. Every week we had a sort of “webinar” where we all would connect to streaming video of a guest speaker and simultaneously be logged on a instant messaging client so that we all could discuss the content of the

Virtual SL Class Resembling University Lecture

steaming video. The whole experience was a good one, and I now feel that I have enough experience in a virtual class (INF 315) and “telecommuting” class (INF 312) to make the comparison.

Virtual Class is More Interactive

This is the most obvious difference between our virtual class and a class taken online — that virtual class is much more engaging. Engaging in online class interactivity is generally just traditional reading and writing. In my online class, the maximum interactivity I experienced was when we had weekly “webinars.” I would have a chat application open (Pidgin) to interact with the class, Realplayer or Quicktime open to watch a professor or guest speaker present a topic, and my browser would be open to follow along with the speakers and click URLs posted in chat. This kept me pretty busy and multitasking between various applications and levels of interactivity.

Another Class Taking Place in Second Life

However, my interactive experience in a virtual class is much different. Virtual class in Second Life is always highly interactive at all times. Even if nobody is talking, typing, or “doing anything,” the possibilities of interrupting the silence or just going off and doing something is always there. Whereas interactivity in an online, remote class depends on the authority to delegate what happens and what there is to do, a high levek of interactivity in a virtual class is always going on as long as you are logged in to the virtual world.

Virtual Class is More Entertaining

There is no doubt that virtual class is more fun. A more descriptive adjective would be that virtual class is more stimulating. Rather than staring at the “one-dimensional” chat room or website as you do in an online class, in virtual class, you’re staring into a three dimensional environment full of possibilities. Often, during downtime, before class, or after class, I will simply explore Second Life. I will sometimes just open up the Search feature and visit one of the showcased sims. Some are simply captivating.

Also, just seeing other classmates in the virtual classroom gives you a better sense that others are there and you actually ARE interacting with a face, even if it’s only the face of one’s avatar. Conversatons and discussions feel more personal because you have a meta-physical presence. In an online classroom chatroom, you’re communicating with an alias in textual chatter. Not only is it less rich than virtual class communication, it’s just bland.

 

[pic of pidgin, quicktime, and website open from online class]

Companies Rush In, Companies Rush Out.

Back in July 2007, the Los Angeles Times published an article about marketers getting second thoughts about entering Second Life.

Second Life seemed very enticing at first with its cheap cost and growing member base. It looked like prime opportunity for marketers to get exposure in an edgy medium. However, marketers soon found out that Second Life users weren’t avid virtual shoppers. The article explains that shopping definitely is not the prime activity in Second Life. Another article breaks down the cost of setting up a presence in Second Life to setting up a conventional web campaign. The numbers show that Second Life simply isn’t worth it as an advertising platform.

Sony's BMG Music Presence

This always made sense to me. Second Life, to me and my impression of it, is a social medium. In a way, one of its central components is that it’s a glorified chatroom. Even the name “Second Life” lends to the fact that people are using it to express themselves in a virtual world… virtually. While users may spend Linden Dollars “souping up” or personalizing their nook of Second Life or on their avatar’s wardrobe, big spending doesn’t seem like a logical outcome of Second Life, Second Life’s intent, and the objective of its user base.

I’ve been looking at examples of companies that have spawned virtual presences within Second Life, and for the most part they are engaging in “traditional” advertising mechanisms — the same tired advertising schemes that were are exhausted of in real life. Just because a banner ad or a mural advertisement is inside a virtual world doesn’t mean it’s any different from a billboard we see every day commuting to school or work. I think that most of the presence models established by companies were flawed coming out of the gates because they focused on such archaic conventions for publicizing themselves.

On some of my more random journeys through Second Life, I will encounter one of the many ghost towns with advertisment blocks plastered on a lot of surfaces, a overwhelming as it would be in real life. It appears that the only companies and ventures that have had the most success were those that actually embraced the framework of Second Life or the ones that had an outside-the-box approach. For example, Second Life is prime real estate for virtual education, just like this class. I’ve read other articles that have expressed this as well.

Do These Nonprofit Projects Really Help Anyone?

When I first heard about nonprofit organizations in Second Life, I was pretty skeptical.

This is largely due to the fact that I still don’t quite understand what the nonprofit/humanitarian/philanthropist groups in Second Life do despite the tour we received last class. I suppose I didn’t see enough specific examples of their work to understand the possibilities.

Our guest speaker's initial presentation

What did make sense though was the urban housing prototype in Educators’ Coop. When we first teleported there, it looked like the graduate students simply built a look-alike East Austin neighborhood, but our tour guide explained to us that this neighborhood preview was actually a bunch of housing prototypes heavily devoted to low-cost living and eco-friendly parameters.

One stop on our guest speaker's tour

The graduate students had put little markers on almost every structure of the house to explain the function of it. For instance, there was a question mark icon floating above the roof. When click, a dialog box popped explaining the low-cost, recycled materials that would make up the roof and how the roof was specially insulated to help maintain specific temperatures within the house. There were markers all over the house explaining other design decisions like the row of solar panels on the roof in the back yard and the smaller horizontal windows high up in the living room/kitchen.

A corner of the urban housing prototype street

The prototype was a product of the grad students collaborating with engineers and architects and a lot of my skepticism was blown away when our tour guide explained that a few of these prototypes were now actually being built. I felt like it was the first real Second-Life-to-Real-World demonstration I had seen and it made a lot of sense.

Backside of the prototype we walked through

The students did a fantastic job and it really changed the way I thought about Second Life. Before last class, I felt that such projects in Second Life were largely a waste of time and that there were better, more effective ways to get things done that to make a model in a game. Now that I’ve experienced the East Austin prototype urban housing, I understand that a “life size” model in Second Life really gives you a perspective you can’t experience when reading about it on paper, or looking at some 2D mock-ups drawn up on some image software.